Showing results by author "David Lane" in All Categories

This small book explores four main topics: Professor Hoffmann's user interface theory of consciousness, Professor Lane's virtual simulation hypothesis of consciousness, Brandon Gillet's quantum mind understanding of consciousness, and the future implications of virtual reality and augmented reality.

Where our lives of Jewish learning collide with our love of Nerd Culture. Join us as we explore Jewish texts, history, and values and the apparent and invisible connections to your favorite movies, characters, and hobbies. www.torahsmash.com

In this book via three key essays, I attempt to turn the issue of mindless automatons on its head (with a bad pun included) by pointing out that “this [very issue] begs a much larger question: how do we really know that the zombie is merely a mindless automaton? The obvious answer is that we don't.” In other words, while it is certainly true that we can project consciousness on all sorts of objects that may lack it...

Based primarily upon the personal testimony of disciples of John-Roger about his hidden life, a scandal of devastating proportions has begun to rock the Movement's international membership. This article, the first of its kind, will take a close look at the present controversy, addressing the larger issue of how new religious groups should be studied in light of legitimacy and authenticity.

Although Plato didn’t know about virtual reality headsets or what such a new-fangled technology could evoke, he did understand better than most that humans do not see reality as it is, but rather how we filter it, moment to moment.

This book presents a glimpse into the fascinating life and work of Baba Faqir Chand, the famous "unknowing" sage of India. Faqir explains in vivid details how gurus do not know about the miracles and visions attributed to them. He also explains the secrets behind surat shabd yoga practice and provides a detailed description of how to transcend visionary phenomena.

Presents a critical overview of guru succession in the Radhasoami tradition from its inception in the mid-1850s up until early 1991. Provides vital information for anyone interested in the politics behind guru succession in general. Includes extensive notes and an exhaustive bibliography.

This book critically examines the issue of gurus and asks a series of penetrating questions about their status and our supposed need to follow them. The author is a well-known expert in researching shabd yoga gurus and has traveled to India nine times, interviewing some of the most famous masters in the tradition, including Tripta Devi, Agam Prasad Mathur, Darshan Singh, and Baba Faqir Chand.

Perhaps the study of consciousness has an inherent limitation, similar in import to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics or Gödel’s incompleteness theorem in mathematics. Perhaps we are like seasoned travelers on a Mobius strip in quest of the “other” side of the band who after long and arduous circular travels come to realize that no matter what route we take we will always only be touching the same surface.

This little book explores the projective nature of consciousness by using various rides at Disneyland to explain how awareness works as a virtual simulator.

Describes the famous 14 dreams of Queen Trishala, the mother of Mahavira, one of the key spiritual figures in Jainism.

This book is one of Betrand Russell’s more famous essays on the importance of science in education and why it should be more emphasized in school and not disdained.

This is a small book on the great mystic-sage, Maharishi Shiv Brat Lal, who authored hundreds of books in Urdu, Hindi, and English. He is most famous today as the guru of Baba Faqir Chand, the unknowing sage of Hoshiarpur. Touches upon shabd yoga and Radhasoami and gives an outline of Maharishi's biography.

This is the first in a series of very short books focusing on mystics of the world. Charan Singh was one of the most well-known masters of shabd yoga in the 20th century. For nearly 40 years, Charan Singh served the needs of millions of spiritual seekers. This audiobook contains excerpts which come from a series of unpublished letters by Charan Singh, focus on overcoming the desires and attachments of the lower mind and attuning one’s attention to the inner sound current during daily meditation.

There is no doubt in my mind that Faqir Chand is one of the most important shabd yoga masters in history and that his frank confessions of “unknowingness” are of vital importance for those interested in religion and spiritual masters. Faqir reveals what other gurus will not. Here in the MSAC Philosophy Group at Mt. San Antonio College, it is our wish to republish almost all of Faqir Chand's books and pamphlets in English and give them a wider audience.

This audiobook explores various agnostic ideas and statements from such luminous thinkers are Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow, Thomas Henry Huxley, Joseph McCabe, etc. With contributions by professors Andrea Diem-Lane and David Christopher Lane. From the Foreword: "When Spencer Tracy, playing Clarence Darrow in the movie Inherit the Wind, takes the Bible in one hand and On Origin of Species in the other and clasps them together side by side to illustrate how science and religion can work together, one is led to assume that Darrow was indeed a theist evolutionist".

This audiobook explores Nick Bostrom's idea that a computer could theoretically create self-conscious programs within its own hardware, with parallels to the “Blind Watchmaker” idea, where amaurotic processes produce an opened eye-consciousness that can ruminate about its origins.

What makes Errol Flynn so fascinating is that he lived a life that was so adventurous and seemingly impossible it borders on the surreal. Refreshingly, Flynn makes no apologies for his lifestyle and even revels in his iconoclastic ways. Flynn captures the essence of his thinking when he opines, "I know that truth is sometimes an octagon and that I am one. Contradiction is a cardinal element of life and of itself may be no contradiction."

What is matter anyways? - From organisms to cells to proteins to molecules to atoms to electrons to light? The most famous equation in modern physics is Einstein's E=MC2, which, if we pause for a second, is as mysterious as anything written in our ancient religious scriptures and measurably more radical. My point is that the resistance we have to reductionists who say we are "just matter" is because we tend to think of matter as flat. It is, of course, anything but.

This audiobook contains four original papers that are fundamental to our understanding of modern biology, including Mendel's "Experiments in Plant Hybridization", Wallace's "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type", Huxley's initial review of On the Origin of Species, and Watson and Crick's groundbreaking paper, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids". Professor David Christopher Lane explains why these papers are so elemental in the history of science.